ABSTRACT
How much instruction do Chilean students receive in Soil Science? Bibliometric evaluation of elementary and high school curricula

Rocío E. Gallardo Jara1 , Juan Ortiz1*, Marcelo Panichini2*, Mathias Kuschel-Otárola1, Pedro M. de Souza Campos2, Pablo Neira3, Benjamín Sandoval-Leal4, Tatiana Escobar1, Winfred Espejo1, Eliana Pereyra5, Silvia Patricia Paredes-Carrera6, Inés Figueroa-Cares1, Erik Zagal1, Mauricio Schoebitz1, Analí Rosas1, Marco Sandoval1, Manuel Casanova7, and Neal Stolpe1
 
In spite of the unquestionable role of soil in regulating countless natural processes and satisfying human demands (e.g., climate change mitigation), such relevance is virtually unnoticed. Arguably, a limited inclusion of soil science into early education is a critical driver. Accordingly, we compiled and synthesized soil science information into official textbooks provided by the Ministry of Education (MINEDUC) in Chile for elementary (ES) and high school (HS) levels for the years 2018 and 2023. We detected 173 and 232 topics from 56 and 71 textbooks enclosing “soil” and among other 36 adjacent terms (e.g., ecosystem, agriculture) for 2018 and 2023. Once categorizing the data into information into the pedagogic objectives: Knowledge, comprehension, application, and others, we observed a distribution of 30.64%-32.76%; 31.79%-25.00%; 25.43%-33.19% and 12.14%-9.05% for 2018 and 2023. After weighting the data into eleven soil educational goals (e.g., soil genesis), we observed a dominance of environmental awareness concepts, where the educational goal soil degradation and protection temporally varied from 23.64% to 27.27% of core curricula, whereas a decline of ~ 52% in soil functions and ~ 47% agricultural usefulness were detected. However, a temporal overall improvement over time and more equal distribution of topics into soil science disciplines reflects an institutional concern for improving the quality of programs.
Keywords: Basic school, scholar textbooks, scientific education, soil science teaching, soil security.
1Universidad de Concepción, Facultad de Agronomía, Chillán, Chile.
2Instituto de Investigaciones Agropecuarias, INIA Carillanca, Temuco, Chile.
3Universidad de Barcelona, Instituto de Investigación de la Biodiversidad (IRBio), España.
4Universidad de Concepción; Facultad de Arquitectura, Geografía y Urbanismo, Concepción, Chile.
5Universidad Nacional del Sur, Facultad de Agronomía, Bahía Blanca, Argentina.
6Instituto Politécnico Nacional, Escuela Superior de Ingeniería Química e Industrias Extractivas, Ciudad de México, México.
7Universidad de Chile, Facultad de Ciencias Agronómicas, Santiago, Chile.
*Corresponding authors (jortizc@udec.cl; marcelo.panichini@inia.cl)